For the past few weeks in LA class, my class has been reading the book, A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park. This book is separated into two parts, one, about a boy named Salva who is an internally displaced person who later became a refugee in Southern Sudan, 1985. The second part is about a girl named Nya (Knee-Ya) and about her troubles in 2008 to get clean water. Our class did a project which was an empathy experience to put ourselves in their shoes.

My project was mostly related to Nya, and involved limited water and walking while holding water. I walked around my yard for 20 minutes while carrying a bucket of two gallons of water. I also walked around barefoot while doing this. Then, if it was too heavy, I would have to drop some. (I did have to!) What I had left was what I had to drink AND use for the day.

Me walking around my yard carrying the water barefoot. -Photos taken by my dad.

Before the project, I was thinking, “This is going to be a piece of cake! No problemo.” Let me just say that is not how it went. At first, I could barely get the bucket off the ground. I eventually did but after that it just got harder and harder. I did end up having to drop some which made it a little easier but, if I dumped too much, I wouldn’t have enough water for the day. It wasn’t too hard for the day, although it was very tempting to just go get an ice cold glass of water from the fridge.

This project really made me look at the big picture. I did this for a day, but I could barely imagine, doing this every day, for the rest of my life. But people do have to do this every day. Every day, people get water for hours, preventing them from doing other things like getting an education. It really made me appreciate having running water for showers, brushing, drinking, and so much more. And I just don’t know how I could do this every day.